Be One of the Best Places to Work, Even If You Didn’t Make a List

We’re over halfway through the 2017 work year, and many lists of the best places to work are rolling out.

Inc. Magazine (in partnership with Quantum Workplace) surveyed 169,000 people and compiled a list of 50 Best Places to Work.
Fortune (in partnership with Great Places to Work) surveyed 230,000 people and came up with their own list of 100 Best Companies to Work For.
Glassdoor, a recruiting and review site, offers three “best of” lists each year. They use a unique approach for creating their annual Best Places to Work list by analyzing real employee feedback left on their site along with nominations submitted by employees.

Even if your company didn’t make it on a Best Places to Work list, we can analyze these reports to better understand what the best do well and how we can improve…. Read More»

August 29, 2017
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Company Culture, Employee Engagement, Engagement, Human workplace, Workplace Morale
Karyn Mullins
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Empowered Connectivity: How Virtual Teams Create a Human Connection

Technology and the internet have made telecommuting a convenient choice for today’s businesses and workers. The incentives are clear: for employers, lowered office expense; for employees, flexible work location. Businesses that utilize virtual teams know personal connections are important for team engagement and productivity. Several tactics can help virtual groups create the needed human connection…. Read More»

July 27, 2017
1 Comment
Communication, Employee Engagement, Engagement, Technology
Wendy Reid
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How to Unleash Innovation Hidden in Your Enterprise

To many executives, involving rank-and-file workers in business strategy is a strange concept. Isn’t business strategy better left to those trained in it? Can’t the VP of operations provide all the insights a regular employee could — and then some? The reality, however, is that strategic planners tend to be a homogenous bunch, and organizational creativity thrives on diversity. Three-quarters of a strategy team might be ex-consultant MBAs or members of the executive suite. Sure, their ideas might look great in 2×2 or 9-box matrices, but they’re all several degrees of separation from the factory floor. Innovation happens when those executive-level ideas collide with equally valuable ones from everyday workers…. Read More»

July 24, 2017
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Engagement, Human workplace, Leadership, Purpose, Return On Trust
Skot Carruth
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Employee Training: A Business Investment You Can Count On

“Return on investment.” When a business has made an (often significant) investment in an employee training and development program, they want to see tangible results. But what type of results should we measure? Employee training and development is a ‘people’ investment just as much as it’s a ‘cash’ investment. The returns from an organization’s investment in their people can help improve talent recruitment, increase employee retention and engagement, and perhaps most importantly, contribute to a positive work environment…. Read More»

How the Best Companies Engage Employees [Infographic]

Business leaders are feeling the effects of the competitive job market. A drop in retention now could mean loss of business and heightened costs from extra hiring initiatives. This means the ability to engage employees is more important to your bottom line than ever before. Battling employee engagement pitfalls within your organization is a major challenge, but you have the power to make an impact…. Read More»

Inspire Uninspired Employees: How to Spark Motivation

Does it sometimes feel like you’re wasting your breath trying to inspire uninspired employees? Managers make their best attempt at coaching employees to harness their own sense of motivation to achieve their personal and professional goals. But many tactics aimed at motivating uninspired employees have one major flaw: they don’t account for the person and the impact emotions, feelings, thoughts, and mindset have on their ability to feel drive.
… Read More»

June 13, 2017
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Employee Engagement, Engagement, Human workplace, Workplace Morale, Workplace Optimism
Jon Harris
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How to Strengthen Your Team with Intentional and Open Communication

I once worked in an office where, at some point along the way, management instituted the policy that creatives shouldn’t communicate directly with managers in charge of client services. Staff managers were interlocutors with whom we creatives communicated with client services. As a result it took hours, and sometimes days, to perform tasks we could have done in minutes. Let’s just say the system was flawed because, without open communication, it created frustration…. Read More»

Four Things Only Highly Engaged Companies Understand

Imagine your workplace utopia. Is it one of the more engaged companies? Are you picturing Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in The Internship? Napping pods, pop-up cafes, and gyms? Some trending startups even have in-office beer kegs. While I can’t deny naps and endless streams of coffee sound enticing, their efficacy for truly engaging employees may not be as high as you think. These fun perks seem interesting at first, but after a while the novelty wears off, and companies are left with napping, smoothie-drinking, sandwich-eating disengaged employees. Here’s how to go beyond on-the-surface perks and dive deep into building a strong employee engagement foundation…. Read More»

Your Mission Statement Holds the Key to Boosting Team Accountability

You spent a lot of time constructing an eloquent mission statement — one full of promises and overflowing with trendy jargon. Top management applauds it, and clients appreciate it. But do your employees see it merely as rambling, meaningless verbiage? Less than 50 percent of the nation’s workers feel motivated by their employers’ core value statements. And that disconnect between what workers need and what they get is causing a catastrophic drop in team accountability. The people who are most important to your business’s success deserve a mission statement that’s more than a snappy sound bite. Your core values must resonate at every level, providing dependable anchors on which personnel can rely.
… Read More»

May 24, 2017
No Comments
Company Culture, Employee Engagement, Engagement, Purpose, Workplace Morale, Workplace Optimism
Michael Manning
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How To Prepare Employees For Their Dream Careers

Strategies from successful companies like the Stryker Corporation should not only be listened to, but implemented immediately. For the sake of engagement and employee retention, your team needs similar opportunities within their own organization to grow and reach their dream careers. Company leaders should understand this deep desire to climb the ladder and fight for those dreams – after all, that’s how most of them got to their positions. It’s when we stop empathizing with team members that we start losing the employee retention battle to careers they were striving to reach.
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